


night of the living head

by guineaDogs



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autumn, Curse Breaking, Curses, Halloween, Keith is a rude pumpkin, M/M, Magic, Pumpkins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27215290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineaDogs/pseuds/guineaDogs
Summary: Shiro's expecting a lowkey Halloween by himself, curled up on the couch with old horror movies. What he doesn't expect is for the jack o'lantern he carved earlier in the evening to start sassing him.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 69





	night of the living head

**Author's Note:**

> Try as I might, this may be the only Trick or Sheith fic I get done on time. But hey! It's here, and maybe a little weird/silly, but when I was brainstorming ideas for the classic monster/pumpkin carving prompts, my roommate suggested a 'reverse headless horseman' and that's how I got here. Don't think too hard about the hows and whys for this story, because I certainly didn't ;)
> 
> Enjoy!

"You don't want that one."

Shiro looks up from the pumpkin he's sizing up to glance at the stern-faced woman who owns the pumpkin patch. He’s been looking at pumpkins for the better part of twenty minutes to find the right one, and up until this point she hadn’t said a word to him. As far as he can see, there's nothing wrong with the pumpkin. Sure, it's not the biggest, and it has an unbecoming flat side, with brown and grey blemishes spreading across it. It's a good pumpkin, though. It even has a long stem, so he can't help but feel puzzled by the woman's declaration. "Why not?"

"That pumpkin is going to cause you nothing but trouble."

He looks down at the pumpkin again. It's just a pumpkin. A gourd. Nothing about it sticks out as being troublesome to him. And even so, he's found that he's not too fond of people telling him, or _inferring,_ that he should or shouldn't do things. He didn't like it when his now ex-boyfriend did it, and he certainly doesn't like it when some woman he doesn't know starts in on it now.

Is it because of his prosthetic? Is she really making judgements about his capabilities because of that? Stubbornness sets in, and Shiro doesn't entertain any other meaning behind her words. "This is the one I want."

She sighs, waving for him to come over as she reaches for the cash beside her on the outdoor plastic table she has set up near her produce. "Fifty dollars."

" _Fifty_? Why? This is a normal sized pumpkin, and all of your signage says they’re ten—"

"I told you. That one is trouble." She jabs a long bony finger toward the gourd nestled in his arm against his smart argyle sweater.

He’s faced with two options: he can pick a different pumpkin, or he can double down. Maybe he’s being unreasonable. Fifty bucks is _a lot_ especially for a carving pumpkin, but now that he’s been told he can’t have it, there isn’t another pumpkin he’d rather have. “Whatever.” Shiro rolls his eyes as he fishes out his wallet, balancing it on the top of the pumpkin to open the billfold to find a few bills to pass over to her. 

It's his first time visiting this particular pumpkin patch, and as he heads back to his car, he's certain it'll be his last.

* * *

He's quite fond of autumn traditions. Really, it's the best season: it's cooler, the leaves change colors, and there just always seems like there's many fun things going on throughout the city. Pumpkin-everything is readily available in stores, there's harvest festivals, haunted houses, and hay bale rides. Corn maizes– _hah,_ he thinks, laughing at his own pun.

Of course, all of these things are _better_ when not done alone. That's the only downside: he picked out this pumpkin alone, he's taking it back to an empty townhouse, and he's going to carve it alone. It's for the best, though, and Shiro knows this to be true.

The alternative is finding someone he barely knows to partake in these activities with him, and while it would fix the whole _alone_ issue, he feels like it's a little pathetic. He’s not quite ready to date again, and previous attempts to even look for a platonic friend to do _friend things_ proved to be a pain. It felt like nearly every time he thought he was making decent headway, the definitely not-agreed-upon _with benefits_ assumption raised its ugly head.

It's not even that he's opposed to the idea. He just wants actual friends who like him, get along with him, and accept him for who he is without there being a 'how do I get into his pants' angle. He'd had good friends before– but were they really? Seeing as he lost them in the break up that was _supposed_ to be completely amicable.

_'We can still be friends, Shiro.'_

"My ass," he mutters with a derisive snort as he unlocks his front door.

He closes the door behind himself with a firm kick of his shoe, barely pausing at all as he makes his way to the kitchen. It's a nice kitchen: there's an island with a flat stove and a double oven built into the wall behind it. It had been the major selling point when he'd bought it. He had visions of cooking together with his partner, of having children working on homework as they cooked, or perhaps an insistent cat rubbing against their legs and feet.

It was a foolish fantasy. Now there's no partner, no children on the horizon, no— well. He supposes he _could_ get a cat, but he worries that it's not the right time. If he keeps basing it off of his long work hours and his frequent inability to take time off short of emergencies, it's never going to be the right time. But it seems unfair to adopt a cat, and then proceed to rarely be home in the daylight.

So no cat.

Just him.

And now this pumpkin that won't be around for long either. It's Halloween, after all. Generally he would buy a carving pumpkin prior to the day of, but his schedule is what it is. At least there's still plenty of daylight. Plenty of time to carve a pumpkin before he settles on the couch alone with a movie and a popcorn bowl meant for two.

He's already got the carving kit set out on the island—the metal kind, of course, not the plastic kits that barely survive a single use—along with old newspapers. For the past few years, he's been into the more elaborate carving designs: monsters and silhouettes from prolific horror films, but that was before... well, everything.

This year he doesn't have such elaborate plans. Just a traditional jack o'lantern. There's nothing wrong with going back to basics. Sometimes it's the best option, which seems to be the case tonight.

For the most part, it goes well. He cuts out the top, pulling the lid off by the stem and cleans out the inside of the gourd. It's slimy and messy, but the scent of pumpkin fills the room and Shiro can't complain. This is one of his favorite parts. He takes the time to pick out the seeds, which he'll later rinse and season and roast in the oven. The rest of the guts merely get set aside to go into the trash.

He washes his hands and cleans off his tools before returning to the pumpkin to actually carve it. It goes well. The first eye is a perfect triangle that he can easily push inside the pumpkin once it's completely cut out. His small knife gets stuck on the ridge of the second eye, however. It doesn't impact the way the eye looks, but his hand slips in trying to dislodge it, and as a result the knife cuts a diagonal line from the eye to the pumpkin's hypothetical cheek.

Shiro smooths his thumb over the cut after removing the knife. A small amount of serrated pumpkin is built up along the cut, but it's thin and after he wipes it away, it's hardly noticeable like this. It may show up once it's lit, but after the nose and mouth get cut away exactly as he wanted, he figures that if the cut _does_ show up in candlelight, it'll just be added character.

The sun is setting as Shiro declares it a job well done. He cleans up the island, tossing the guts and pumpkin-stained newspaper into the trash can. He fetches a lighter and tea light from the cabinet to the right of the sink, the one that has the champagne flutes and porcelain dishware he never uses. He carries them, and the jack o'lantern to his front step.

He sets it down out of the way of the door, but in a spot where it'll be visible to trick-or-treaters and other passersby. The candle goes inside, it's lit, and after taking a photo of his work, he heads back inside.

* * *

“It’s fucking _cold.”_

Shiro’s halfway through _Night of the Living Dead_ when he swears he can hear someone on the other side of his front door. He pauses the movie, frowning as he stares in that door. It’s solid, with a small half arch of a window near the top of it, so he’s unable to see if there’s a shadow or any other indication that someone is there.

He _does_ have the front light on, so it could be a trick-or-treater. But it doesn’t explain why there’s not a knock on his door. Shiro opts to err on the side of caution, and gets up from the couch. Grabbing the bowl full of candy he’s had resting on the end table by the front door, he opens to find–

Nothing.

No one on his front step. No one closer than a couple houses away, by the looks of things. 

Shrugging it off, he closes the door and settles back on the couch to continue the movie.

“Seriously? You’re just going to leave a guy hanging like this?”

The remote is still in his hand, the film is still paused, black and white frozen on the screen as blue light fills the dark room. Maybe he's imagining things. That's the best explanation for hearing things when there's no one around. He hasn't exactly slept well since—

For a while now.

"I know you can hear me in there, asshole."

Shiro frowns, staring at the front door. Deciding to err on the side of caution, he returns to his front step, but not before grabbing the metal baseball bat stuffed in the back of his coat closet.

"Hello?" Again, he looks around. Costumed children are spread out along the sidewalks, but just like before, there's no one close enough to his front door for him to have been able to hear them from inside. It's all the more reason to write this all off as being in his head.

Perhaps he could call it a night and make a concerted effort to get some _goddamn sleep for once_ — even if he knows that the issue was not the lack of trying.

He's heading back for the door when it happens again.

"Right here, you big oaf."

So his mind is not only playing tricks on him, but it's also being a dick to him. Cool. Shiro shakes his head, and—

"Down here."

_Down here_ doesn't make any sense. _Down here_ is the jack o'lantern with the broad Cheshire grin he carved into it. Jack o'lanterns can't talk, but it's possible that someone hid a speaker or similar device in there to fuck with him. Maybe that's a little paranoid of him, but short of a sleep deprived hallucination, this was the next thing that made the most sense.

So he kneels down, and thoughtlessly sticks his finger into the pumpkin through its open mouth with the intent of feeling around the sides to see if something's there. But all he feels is the slimy, moist inner wall of the gourd.

And then, searing pain on his knuckle, and a complete disbelief as he stares at his throbbing finger, and the jack o'lantern that _impossibly has its teeth clamped down around him._

What the fuck. What the fuck. _What the fuck._

Adrenaline courses through his veins as he jerks his finger free with such force that he completely loses his balance, and falls flat on his ass two steps down. He can't wrap his mind around any of it. The voice doesn't make sense, the bite doesn't make sense, and the way the jack o'lantern's face contorts is completely unbelievable.

And yet.

"Now that I have your attention. I need you to find me a body."

* * *

The jack o'lantern sits upon Shiro's kitchen island once more. Shiro can hardly bring himself to look at the damn thing as he paces, fist tangled in his forelock as he tries to process what's happening. It doesn't make sense, and he doesn't know what he can trust. If he decides to trust his hearing, there's a pumpkin berating him on the counter. If he decides to trust his sight, he has to acknowledge that from the corner of his eye, he can see the jack o'lantern's eyes narrowed as it scowls at him. 

What is he supposed to make of any of this? 

"Are you going to keep ignoring me? It's fucked up to mutilate a guy and not even bother honoring the one simple request he has." 

Shiro halts, wide eyes now properly trained on the jack o'lantern. Those are harsh words, and there's part of him that feels vaguely horrified at the implication. He doesn't want to move forward in his life having to worry about whether he's hurting produce he prepares for meals, like he is right now. "You're not alive and none of this is real." 

"Fuck you, dude. Just because I'm... corporeally challenged, to some extent, doesn't make me any less real than you are." 

Shiro can only stare at the ridiculousness of this entire situation. "'Corporeally challenged,'" he repeats. 

"Do you know what it's like to be just a head? I can't move and I'm cold. You scraped out my insides and didn't even have the decency to give me a scarf. You wouldn't have dared if I still had my body."

"You mean the vine you grew on?" He can't believe he's even entertaining this conversation. There's got to be some sort of variance between what he thinks he's experiencing right now versus reality. What if he's actually just standing in his kitchen talking to himself? He knew he was lonely, but damn. "If not, that's... you're literally your entire body." 

The jack o'lantern falls quiet, and if not for his eyes still being narrowed at him, Shiro would have assumed the hallucination was over. But then, he speaks again, much more softly than anything it had said previously. "I did have a body before this. A human one."

"How do you go from being a human to a... pumpkin?" 

"A curse, I died maybe, I don't know. That part is fuzzy. But it happened, and if you could get me a body like I've asked, everything can go back to normal." 

Shiro has his doubts, but when possibly living through a lucid fever dream, it doesn't hurt in indulging, right? "Okay, if you were a person before, what was your name?"

"Keith." 

Keith doesn't sound like a name Shiro would just make up, but that doesn't truly mean anything. “I’m Shiro,” he says, then pauses. If this is a hallucination, Keith is some subconscious part of his brain and therefore would know that. And yet… "What year is it, Keith?"

There's another frown, which will never not look strange to see on a pumpkin. "I don't know. The things in your home don't look like anything I remember." His words sound distant. "I guess it's been a long time." Another pause. "Are you going to help me? If I run out of time I'll..."

“What, you’ll permanently stay a pumpkin if you don’t have a body by midnight?”

The jack o’lantern—Keith— _gasps._ “How did you know?”

* * *

Fortunately, finding a 'body' for Keith doesn't entail robbing a morgue. Shiro still isn't quite sure why he's going along with this, beyond the obvious fantasy of someone needing his help. He'd drawn a line at body snatching, which had Keith howling with laughter.

"No– just, anything body shaped will do. It can be clothes stuffed with hay and that'll work."

"You want me to make you a scarecrow." Shiro wonders about a lot of things. Like how a pumpkin has the lung capacity to be so loud. Or how he's supposed to find a bale of hay so late at night.

"I want a _body_ , and I don't care how it happens."

Which is how Shiro ends up in his backyard, well past ten at night, raking up pine needles. The cold air has bite to it, and the threat of snow seems likely. He has Keith sat on his outdoor table, with a trapper hat resting on the top of him and a scarf wrapped around the base of him. Shiro doubts that actually does anything, but Keith isn't complaining.

In fact, his demeanor has softened quite a bit ever since Shiro agreed to help him. Which is nice. It’s nice to talk to someone, even if they are a pumpkin. 

As soon as he's gathered enough pine needles, Shiro's stuffing them into an old pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. It's careful work, attempting to get the sleeves and legs stuffed decently enough with the limited amount of needles he was able to find. When he's done, he ties off the sleeves and pant legs. The edge of the sleeves are carefully stuffed into gloves, the legs into an old pair of galoshes.

The optics are certainly strange, but he doubts his neighbors would bat an eye if they saw a headless body sprawled out in his backyard, given it's Halloween. Still, Shiro can't shake just how foolish he feels going through all of this.

"Will this work?" He asks Keith, carrying over the jack o'lantern so he can get a better look at the makeshift body in the limited lighting the back porch light has to offer. 

"It's perfect, Shiro. I can't believe I'm actually going to have a body again."

Shiro still isn't sure how this will work, if it will, but again: no harm in indulging whatever this is, right? Worst case scenario, he's kept himself busy all night. That's not the worst thing ever. "I can't actually attach your head to it, though, and it'll probably fall apart if I try to move it."

"That's okay. Just put me in the right spot, and I'll take care of the rest." Shiro has to wonder if the cold was ever an issue, or if that was just how Keith chose to get his attention.

Damp leaves press into his knees as he kneels down beside the scarecrow body. Shiro lays the pumpkin on its flat backside, so the carved portion faces the night sky. Once positioned as best as possible, Shiro adjusts the scarf and hat. "How's this?"

"I can't remember the last time I saw the stars," Keith responds, apparently fixated on the break in the clouds. It's a long silent moment before his gaze flits over to Shiro's. "You should go rest for the night. If this works, you'll know in the morning."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then thank you for trying anyway. "

Shiro doesn't know why that weighs so heavily on him, but he nods and goes back inside for the night.

* * *

The sun is too bright, bleeding in through the blinds as he wakes. His head hurts, and as he rubs his eyes, he wonders whether he's coming down with something. He doesn't feel like he has a fever, but recalling the events of the night before– that had to be a dream, right?

But when he sits up, he realizes there's a man sitting at the edge of his bed, watching him. He's beautiful: he has a sharp angular face framed by dark lush curls. Shiro sucks in a breath as he studies him, not even having it in him to be startled. Because he knows.

He knows those eyes. That scar.

"Keith?"

The man smiles, reaching over to cover his hand with Shiro's. "Hi. I wanted to thank you again before I go. It means everything having my body back." He gestures to the scar on his cheek, and adds cheekily. “Even if it came with new additions.”

That's the moment when Shiro's heart seizes up in alarm. "You're leaving? Where are you going?"

Keith shrugs, staring down at the carpet as if it's particularly interesting. "I don't know. But you've given me a new chance at life, and I couldn't possibly ask for anything more, so..."

"Stay. Please." _I've been so lonely and wherever you were before, I'm sure you were too._ "It'd mean a lot to me."

Keith leans in. "Really? It's okay if I stay?"

"You can stay forever, really." Shiro leans in too, sealing his promise with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/guineaDogs).


End file.
